Amid all the reversals, recriminations and revisions around the controversial decision by Georgia’s school chief to not recommend Advanced Placement African American Studies course for state approval, this fact was never in doubt: Politics is damaging public education.
While the controversy over the state’s failure to sanction the course exploded last week, the fuse was lit in 2021. That was the beginning of the fabricated allegations that K-12 schools were teaching critical race theory, a college-level academic concept that posits that racism extends beyond individuals to how the legal system and policies treat people of color.
From there, the derangement dam burst with claims that school libraries harbored pornography, teachers indoctrinated students, and social justice classes replaced social studies. The General Assembly saw political profit in attacking schools as liberal hothouses, boosted by Gov. Brian Kemp, who declared that he would weed out “divisive ideologies like critical race theory that pit kids against each other.”
All that political mudslinging may have influenced state School Superintendent Richard Woods to decline to recommend AP African American Studies course to the state Board of Education. The failure to endorse the course went under the radar until Gwinnett County Public Schools notified families last week that it would not be able to offer the AP class because Woods wasn’t recommending its adoption.
The AP African American Studies course had been piloted for two years in Georgia to strong student response. The news that Woods didn’t recommend it for approval broke as African American history was being made with the embrace of Kamala Harris for president by the Democratic Party.
Woods didn’t help matters by giving short, vague statements about his rationale. After several efforts to pin down what bothered Woods about the AP class, he only said in a statement, “When I reviewed the AP course, I had concerns about the state endorsing the totality of the course.”
Woods then said school districts could take what might be described as a back-door route to teaching AP African American Studies and earning state funding. They could use an existing code for a state-created introductory course on African American history for ninth and 10th graders and infuse it with the higher-level AP content.
By then, Woods was facing rebellion from frustrated educators, upset students and from someone that nobody had on their bingo card, Brian Kemp.
Yes, the governor who happily in 2022 signed House Bill 1084 limiting how K-12 teachers can approach “divisive concepts,” including race and racism, took Woods to the woodshed for the vetting of the AP African American Studies class. Kemp sent Woods a stern letter expressing concerns over the process and asking him 10 questions. This side of Kemp surprised a lot of Georgians, some of whom wondered if the governor’s computer had been hacked.
Motives aside, Kemp posed the right questions. What specific reasons went into the decision not to recommend the AP African American Studies for approval by the board? Over the past 10 years, how many AP courses have been recommended by the state and how many have not been recommended?
Woods answered Kemp on Thursday, but his responses only compounded the confusion. Woods told Kemp that using the existing African American Studies course keeps “the review, approval, adoption, and delivery of this curriculum closer to local students, educators, parents, and boards. ... it’s my view that decisions around offering part or all of this AP course should be handled locally.”
The superintendent doesn’t explain why AP African American Studies ought to be “handled locally” but not the other 38 AP courses. We’ve seen the perils of allowing curriculum to be determined and cobbled together by “community members.” In some districts around the country, that’s resulted in the banishment of Ruby Bridges’ account of integrating an all-white school and the award-winning picture book “And Tango Makes Three,” the true story of two male penguins who parent a baby penguin.
Many questions surround Woods’ do-it-yourself approach, causing the state‘s largest school system to hold off on offering the AP African American Studies course. “We don’t want our students taking an Advanced Placement course they can’t receive all the rewards for,” said Gwinnett Deputy Superintendent Nikki Mouton at a board meeting Thursday.
Educators and parents want assurances that students would earn the bump on their school or HOPE grade-point averages that comes from an International Baccalaureate or AP course. And there were concerns that the prestige of having an AP course on a high school transcript would be diminished.
An easier and clearer path exists for Woods: Just recommend the AP class for approval.
After all, AP participation has flourished during Woods’ tenure. Georgia now ranks 16th in the nation for the percentage of students passing AP exams. As an AP proponent, why would Woods stand in the way of the new African American Studies class?
He might have wanted to avoid igniting a battle with the culture warriors in the Legislature, who have a history of battling with the College Board. “This is an awful lot like the Common Core craziness in Georgia, then the AP U.S. History controversy that immediately followed. But this has the added baggage of the politics of the moment,” said Angela Palm, who retired a few weeks ago as director of policy and legislative services for the Georgia School Boards Association. “From what we can see, this has only been a positive experience for the kids so what is the obstacle for the state to now include it as a state-funded course?”
And that brings it back to the effect of politics on education. What’s best for kids is not the critical factor in a Legislature controlled by ambitious extremists whose priority is not expanding learning opportunities but their own profile and voter base.
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